If you’ve been around the communications space for more than a few years, you know well the call quality issues that plagued the VoIP industry from its early days. In fact, if you weren’t an early adopter of the first consumer VoIP services, you more than likely were on the other end of calls with others who were. In either case, recall the choppy calls that often required more repetition than cellular calls.

 

The good news is that most of those issues have since been resolved, and many of us are now enjoying PSTN-quality VoIP — even better if you’re lucky enough to be using wideband technology in your offices. If you’re a Skype user, make sure you and your colleagues or friends have the latest version installed (Version 4.0), and enjoy.

 

Certainly, there have been many VoIP deployment horror stories, but for each one, it’s safe to say there are now many success stories that have driven VoIP adoption in both business and residential markets.

 

So, how does a service provider or enterprise get from the poor call quality of a half-decade ago to the high quality VoIP running on IP networks today?

 

There are, of course, a number of components that, when paired, predict success — and it starts with planning and a complete network assessment. That provides an understanding of what network elements and infrastructure modifications are required to increase the likelihood of a successful deployment.

 

Though some vendors would argue that’s enough, a management platform is critical to ensuring the entire system in operating at optimal efficiency, including test capabilities for verifying MOS scores, network reliability, load handling, service interruption contingencies, and more. These are required to ensure effective prioritization of voice, video, and data traffic, and to ensure real-time delivery of voice and video communications without packet loss or delay.

 

Finally, the real-time requirements of VoIP necessitate meticulous monitoring of VoIP networks to ensure QoS and availability — and to troubleshoot effectively when issues arise. If one thing is certain, it’s that no network is 100 percent trouble-free.

 

None of this is earth-shattering news — in fact, it seems almost common sense. But the fact remains that, in an effort to cut costs and deployment times, many businesses also cut corners. Undoubtedly, those shortcuts eventually make themselves evident.

 

So how do you, as a service provider or a business looking to deploy VoIP services, ensure your deployment is up to specs, ready to meet live-traffic performance requirements? In addition, as a participant in today’s recessionary economy, how can you manage a successful rollout without breaking your budget?

 

To answer these questions, TMC (News - Alert) hosted a Webinar — Service level reporting: Driving IPT success — sponsored by Prognosis, with Gary Audin, president of Delphi, teamed with Tyrome Peterson, director of technical services at Prognosis (News - Alert), to describe the benefits, goals, and requirements of IP Telephony service level reporting.

 

 

VoIP isn’t new — everyone has heard of Vonage, everyone has seen the Cisco (News - Alert) commercials on prime time TV welcoming viewers to the human network, everyone knows about WiFi and Skype (News - Alert). But, the design and implementation of VoIP networks is contingent on the ability to customize to suit individual needs and to ensure network operators have clear visibility into their infrastructures to ensure consistently high call quality.